Death is the Next Beginning
by dragonflybeach
Summary: Hunters don't die. They go to Heaven and regroup. And then the Prophet of the Lord meets The Smartest Guy to Ever Sleep on a Pool Table, and with a little help from The Best Dead Hunters to Wear Plaid, Operation Take Back Heaven is on.


_"Don't worry about Dean. Dean will be fine."_

_Kevin's last thought was_ "Oh shit, Lucifer is loose."

* * *

He opened his eyes, and looked around in shock. Instead of the bunker, he was in a kitchen, one that was familiar but yet strange at the same time.

He found himself scooped up and carried to a table, where bowls of Pho Bo Tai Nam had been set at each place. He had almost forgotten this, the soup his grandmother always made for family dinners because it was his grandfather's favorite.

Mom didn't make it anymore after his grandparents were gone.

"Lien Yen," a male voice said.

Kevin turned to find his grandfather sitting at the head of the table, and a much younger version of his mother beside him.

Her name had originally been Lien Yen. She had changed it to Linda to fit in, but her parents had always refused to call her by that name.

"Ba," she answered.

Grandpa proceeded to speak in rapid Vietnamese. Mom nodded, and occasionally gave one word answers. It had been so many years since he had been around anyone who spoke the language fluently that he had forgotten most of it. He caught his name, school, big, and, cheese, maybe?

He ate his soup until he became so fascinated with watching his mother and grandfather he didn't realize he had pushed the bowl aside.

His grandmother leaned over and took the remainder of his soup away, replacing it with a big bowl of her coconut and tapioca pudding.

His mother apparently protested in more rapid fire Vietnamese because he hadn't eaten all of his dinner, to which his grandma, to the best of his understanding, told her to shove it, that was what grandmothers were for.

Grandma lifted Kevin into her lap, and put not only his bowl of pudding but also her own in front of him, and dared his mother to say anything.

He dipped his spoon into the grainy white dessert, and when he looked up, he was no longer in the kitchen.

He was looking at a glob of snow sitting on a barricade outside the Cobo Center in Detroit.

He remembered this. This was his tenth birthday, when his mother brought him to see a live taping of Jeopardy on location, and had somehow managed to get their picture taken with Alex Trebek.

His mother stood fifteen feet away, talking to someone in a suit.

"Kevin!" an unfamiliar voice hissed.

He turned to find a man in a mask and cape against the wall near the front door, standing beside an old man in a baseball cap.

That wasn't right. Professional wrestling hadn't been in town that weekend, or at least he didn't remember seeing any of them the first time around.

He walked closer to them. "What is going on?"

"Come with us and we'll explain it, friend." the masked man answered.

Kevin took a step backward. "I'm not your friend." he replied uncertainly.

"We're Sam and Dean's friends." the old man offered.

"Sam and Dean Winchester?" Kevin frowned. "They got me killed."

"Welcome to the club." the old man snorted.

"There's a club?" Kevin raised an eyebrow.

The old man choked on a laugh. "Yeah, actually, there is. Come on."

He followed the men through a side door of the arena, but instead of finding himself inside the civic center, they were in a bar of some sort. Three women, two older and one closer to his age, sat at the bar with an older dark skinned man.

"Who are you people, and what is this place?" Kevin asked.

The man with the cape took off his mask, and shook out his hair, which was cut into a mullet.

"This, my friend, is The Roadhouse, or at least the heavenly version of it. Free beer and munchies, no hangovers. I'm Ash, and this," he pointed at the old man in the ballcap. "is Bobby."

Kevin shook himself. "Wait. Bobby. Like, _Dead_ Bobby?"

"I got news for ya, idjit," the old man snorted. "I ain't the only one who's dead."

Kevin's eyes widened, but before he could speak, one of the older ladies reached over and patted his arm.

"Hey honey," she smiled. "I'm Ellen. This is my daughter Jo, and our friend Pamela. That old grump is Rufus. We were all hunters. Well, except Pamela. She was a psychic who worked with hunters."

"Hey gorgeous," Pamela grinned, slowly looking Kevin from head to toe.

"So I've heard your names mentioned before," Kevin looked around the group. "You all knew the Winchesters? They got you all killed and there really is a club?"

"Actually that asshole," Rufus pointed at Bobby. "is the one who killed me, but we were hunting with Sam and Dean at the time."

"Shut up, Rufus," Bobby rolled his eyes.

"We don't sit around and say 'My name is Jo and I died saving Dean's ass,' if that's what you're wondering." the younger woman shrugged.

"The deal is, man," Ash tugged Kevin to a barstool and put a beer in front of him. "This angel, said her name was Naomi, came to me a while back. She said Heaven was on the verge of some major shit going down. She was going to try to stop it, but if she couldn't, to look out for a Winchester ally named Kevin Tran. That, of course, would be you."

"I know who Naomi is," Kevin nodded. "Or who she was. Supposedly she's dead."

"Yeah, well that might explain why we haven't heard her on the scanner lately." Ash jerked his thumb toward a laptop.

"Scanner?" Kevin looked at it skeptically.

"Yeah, I built it to listen in on Angel Radio." Ash shrugged. "Apparently I'm the only one who can use it, because no one else understands Enochian."

"You're a prophet too?" Kevin asked.

Ash made several faces as he mulled over the statement. "I don't know," he finally answered. "But a lot of things would make sense if I am. But anyway, I heard how Metatron appointed himself Grand Poobah and kicked all the angels out of Heaven. I rounded up some of my compadres, and we've been working on a way to put Metatron out and the angels back in."

"Lucifer is out," Kevin announced. "He's in Sam again. That's how I died."

"Nah," Bobby shook his head. "Lucifer's still in the box. That's one of the first things we checked, to make sure the Apocolypse wasn't back on. Metatron's spell put all the angels who were upstairs down to earth, but Lucifer and Michael are still down under. I'm not sayin' it's not an angel possessing Sam, but it's not Lucifer."

Kevin nodded.

"Anyhow," Ash continued. "I've been working on a God Rock translation device." He pointed to another laptop. "We just put in the symbols from the tablets, and with a little luck and few hundred thousand lines of COBOL coding, we'll get the info we need to put things back right."

"But I don't have the tablets." Kevin frowned.

"No problemo, man," Ash clapped him on the shoulder. "We'll just have Miss Pamela do her thing. She can hypnotize you, so that you remember everything on the tablets."

Kevin looked around at the hunters. "You really think we can take Heaven back?"

Bobby leaned across the bar. "Do you think Sam and Dean could do it?"

"Probably," Kevin agreed.

"Where do you think they learned all their tricks?" Bobby winked.

* * *

A/N - This is the only way I'm going to accept Kevin being dead. Sorry.


End file.
